STEAM

At Chartwell you will often hear faculty referring to strengths and stretches as qualities within our students. For example, students must stretch themselves and apply patience, tenacity, and hard work as they learn skills and strategies applied in subjects such as structured literacy and mathematics. While our faculty practice unique multidisciplinary and sensory methods teaching these subjects, they remain typically difficult areas for our students.

Our STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) programs exist to celebrate and grow the strengths and creative interests and potential of our students. These classes, units and cross-curricular activities are designed to leverage many of the inherent abilities within our students. Consider these characteristic shared among students with learning challenges at Chartwell, as shared within our Teacher Training Institute: 

• Enhanced spatial awareness, the ability to manipulate 3D shapes in one’s mind
• Lateral processing, offering unique strategies to rapid problem solving
• “Thinking in pictures” rather than words, identifying and remembering complex images
• Ability to see how things connect to form complex systems, and to identify similarities among multiple things (pattern recognition)
• Strong tendency towards entrepreneurship and creative advocacy or agency

Our faculty within the STEAM department prioritize these aspects of our Chartwell learners while designing powerful and stimulating experiences for students. 

Our philosophy of creating engaging, purposeful, multi-sensory and hands-on learning is applied across all divisions.